What the Sergeant Saw:The Case of Allison Bright
by noenigma
Summary: A closer look at Expiation.
1. A Moment with Rachel

Note: This was not easy to write because there are so many good Lewis scenes in this episode that Hathaway is not privy to…I tried to work in references to as many of my favorites as I could without letting this thing get any longer than it already was. I meant for this to be roughly the same size and overview as the previous one, but…let's just say it got away from me.

Credit to Guy Andrews for all the good parts of dialogue and a great episode!

**What the Sergeant Saw: The Sad Case of Allison Bright**

_A Moment with Rachel_

Sergeant James Hathaway started out the first day of the Allison Bright case not seeing much at all. Contacts…a lot of expense and a lot of bother for little pieces of plastic that were quite often more trouble than they were worth. The day was not off to a good start.

It improved considerably with the arrival of Inspector Lewis.

"I have to make a speech," Lewis announced.

Instead of earning his keep putting the finishing touches on the case they'd closed the previous afternoon, Hathaway was busy trying to find an optometrist who might be able to squeeze him in on short notice. So, he wasn't particularly listening. "Who does?" he asked.

He turned in his chair to see Lewis looking shell-shocked and a bit grey around the gills. "You?" he said in surprise. Lewis nodded his head glumly in confirmation. He couldn't have looked any more rattled if he'd just been told he had only three months to live. Hathaway couldn't help laughing. "Priceless," he said as he turned back to his computer. The thought of Lewis addressing a crowded room of anybody cheered him up considerably. And not just because that meant he wouldn't have to be the one giving a speech. He wondered what DCS Innocent was thinking.

They'd been working together for several months by then. More than long enough for the sergeant to know that the inspector would not relish the prospect of standing in front of a group of strangers and making nice while the entire room stared at him. Not that Lewis wouldn't do fine at it. He handled press conferences decently and with a lot less fuss than some Hathaway could name. In fact, the sergeant thought Lewis was quite good with the press. He told them what he could and didn't waffle about what he couldn't, and the journalists seemed to appreciate knowing they might not get much, but at least it would be the truth.

Press conferences were quick affairs. Say what needed said, get through the Q & A's as gracefully as possible, and walk away. Speeches though. They were a whole other ball game. A ball game it was obvious his boss was not at all looking forward to playing.

DCS Innocent dropping by to try to encourage him in the speechwriting did not help. Lewis, now looking almost physically ill, had been scribbling, crossing out, rolling his eyes, and sighing over his speech for ages by that point. He was in no mood to listen to Innocent's less than original joke and too discouraged to work up a smile or even a grunt to make her believe he at least appreciated her support.

Hathaway, who had finally found an eye doctor willing to fit him in and who was still finding the whole Lewis-giving-a-speech idea a laugh, snickered politely at the chief superintendent's humour, but it wasn't enough to placate her. She took the inspector's less than enthusiastic response as an unspoken reproof. Quite probably because she could see the toll the speech was exacting on Lewis and was feeling a bit guilty for assigning it to him.

Her smile turned to a frown, and she said, "Speaking in public, Lewis, is a duty a senior officer is expected to discharge…without fuss!"

As she rather huffily marched off, Lewis said, "Hathaway, find me some dead people!"

The sergeant, heading off to his appointment, turned back and asked, "Sir?"

"Crime now! Or I shall discharge and it won't be a pretty sight!" the inspector yelled. He ripped his latest attempt from the notepad, balled it up, and threw it towards the rubbish bin.

"Sir," Hathaway said and made his escape. Though he couldn't know it at the time, he'd gone off to meet a killer and catch a glimpse of the man's next victim. It was a very unsettling thing to look back on later when he knew the truth. The entire time he'd sat through that exam Dr. Hugh Mallory's wife had been hanging from the banister of their home. Hathaway had sat centimetres away from the man who had put her there and seen only an ordinary eye doctor. The man had joked and even mentioned his wife, and there'd been nothing in his manner or his voice or his eyes to indicate he'd killed her only that morning.

Actually, even before that truth came out, being called to the scene and discovering it was the home of the man he'd only just met was a bit disconcerting.

"Bit of a coincidence, this," he told Lewis. "I met him a couple of hours ago…sorted out my eyes for me." Hathaway had seen plenty of death by then. Rachel Mallory's bothered him more than most; he felt somehow involved simply by virtue of having met her husband the very day of her death. He'd needed a smoke waiting for the inspector to show, and he could have done without the conversation in the stairwell with her feet dangling lifelessly above them.

As they discussed how the investigation would be handled, the inspector spoke quietly and sympathetically to the dead woman, "You poor girl." Hathaway was not surprised to hear Lewis speak to the dead. He made a habit of it.

Lewis wasn't the first man Hathaway had heard do so. He'd heard men grumble at the dead for calling them away from their supper or being dumped in the rain…just the general griping of men called out to do a disagreeable task when they would have rather been almost anywhere else. And, of course, there'd been those who spoke rudely and quite often vulgarly to the dead in what Hathaway suspected was a very poor attempt to express their horror at death in particular. And then, there were the 'Turn over, you lazy sod' sort of comments from the few who most likely said the same sort of things in the same sort of tone to their car when it wouldn't turn over in the cold.

Consequently, Lewis speaking to the dead wasn't that spectacularly out of the ordinary. It was the manner in which he did it that was unusual in Hathaway's experience. Lewis spoke to them with compassion, with interest, with an awareness of the people they might have been. It was obvious Lewis didn't look at the dead as dead bodies but as dead people. Dead people who had lived and hoped and laughed in the same way he did. People who had a story to tell, people who deserved something better than the violent, unfortunate end their dead had all-too-frequently suffered.

So, when Lewis said, "You poor girl," it merely hammered in what his sergeant was already feeling. Here was a life cut short, a tragedy and a crime. Not, as far as Hathaway saw at that moment, a crime in the legal sense just in the sadness of a family torn apart by a meaningless death. Children ran up and down that staircase, chattering and giggling and telling secrets; the body strung up from the banister had no place there.

Standing there, trying not to see the flaccid arms and legs hanging between him and where the inspector sat staring pensively at the deceased, Hathaway felt almost ill. It was far from the most gruesome death he'd encountered as a CID officer, but he'd have been happier if they'd taken this conversation outside. Even so, although with any other inspector the little tableau on the stairs might have been horrific or farcical with Lewis it was almost companionable…just the two of them and the dead woman taking a moment before they got down to the hustle and bustle of the case.

On a previous investigation, one that hadn't felt so personal to Hathaway, he'd made the mistake of asking Lewis about his penchant for talking to the dead. "Do you always question the dead, Sir?" he'd joked over the still form of a corpse Lewis had just been addressing.

Lewis had frowned back at him and then gone back to looking over the body. Hathaway had thought the frown was going to be all the answer he was going to get, and he'd expected nothing more. But, after Dr. Hobson had come and gone, after SOCO had collected their little goodie bags full of potential clues, and after Lewis and Hathaway had spoken to the less-than-helpful witnesses at the scene, when they'd climbed into Lewis' car to go break the bad news to a wife who had not been terribly broken up by it, Lewis had said, "I used to ask Morse my questions, but…" he'd gestured vaguely with his hand and finished in a quiet voice, "now I'm left asking them of the dead themselves." Lewis had then turned his head to stare out at the passing streets, and his sergeant had regretted not keeping his mouth shut.

Hathaway had been struck then, and was again now, with the knowledge that Lewis was reduced to asking the dead for answers because he wasn't going to get them from his partner. In fact, not only could Hathaway not answer the inspector's questions, he hadn't even shared them. Rings and hoovers and him standing there wanting a cigarette and wondering why they weren't back at the office clearing up loose ends and filing the paperwork on what had until Lewis starting asking questions looked like a straight-forward suicide.

"She's a wrong 'un," Lewis pronounced with certainty and without question. "I want Hobson all over this—" he began and wasn't at all happy to hear she was off on holiday leaving them at the mercy of a locum. For good reason it transpired. Without even getting the body onto the slab, Dr. Cook quickly and, according to Lewis' inexpert opinion, incorrectly ruled Rachel Mallory's death a suicide.


	2. A Visit with Le Plassiter

_A Visit with Le Plassiter_

Chief Superintendent Innocent took the stand-in pathologist's opinion over the inspector's convictions. And that quickly made things complicated for his sergeant. Because while everyone else was blithely assuming the case was closed, Inspector Lewis was determinedly busy turning it into a murder investigation.

The mysterious phone call from Dr. Edward Le Plassiter, a stonking great cheese according to Lewis, and his less than forthcoming, more than manipulative behavior when they came running at his beck and call did not help.

Hathaway had not been terribly impressed with Le Plassiter from the beginning.

"Why are you here?" the professor had demanded of Hathaway even before they'd been through the door. "Oh, don't tell me," he'd gone on disparagingly, "It's because Lewis is afraid I might use words of more than two syllables." Hathaway had bristled on behalf of his inspector, but Lewis had taken it in stride.

"Aye," he'd agreed easily, "and you've already said 'syllable'. I might have to lie down." And, perhaps, Hathaway had misread a poor sense of humour as something even worse, but there was nothing in the man's disturbing tale or manner to make Hathaway like him any better.

Certainly, not in the short amount of time he was given. Being kicked out of the interview…well, he hadn't denied it when Lewis had asked him if he was sulking. Fuming, more like though. The whole 'blond boy' issue had not gone over well with the blond boy in question.

"You're not telling me you trust him?" Hathaway asked incredulously after Lewis had explained what Le Plassiter wanted from them. They weren't private detectives, and they weren't on Le Plassiter's staff of household servants, and why was he the one ranting and raving? It was Lewis who carried around a certain animosity for Oxford dons of all types. But that for some mysterious reason seemed to have been buried on this occasion.

"Morse really rated Le Plassiter," Lewis explained. "Reckoned he was the real thing." Ah. So that's why they had come running when the man called and why that little farce had been allowed to continue. Hathaway couldn't believe they were going to play games with Le Plassiter on a dead man's say-so. His disbelief must have shown too clearly on his face.

Lewis turned and frowned at him. "Say it," he ordered.

"The psychology of this is all wrong, Sir," Hathaway said. He hadn't been ready to discuss psychology under Rachel Mallory's ringed hand, but he was prepared to do so now.

It wasn't necessary—or at least he didn't get the chance. "I know, but it is all we've got," Lewis cut him short and went off to visit 'Uncle David'. Hathaway frowned after him, and on they went investigating a 'crime' ruled otherwise on the word of a dead chief inspector and a stonking great cheese.


	3. A Little Chat with Innocent

_A Little Chat with Innocent_

DCS Innocent was not overjoyed to find the sergeant filling in background information on the case or to learn that Lewis was still pursuing enquiries into it. "So you are both fully occupied investigating a death medically confirmed as suicide?" she asked. Hathaway didn't take it as a good sign when she shut the door. When she parked herself on his desk, he knew he was in trouble. "You and I need to have a little chat," she said, and he was smart enough to know it was going to be a very one-sided 'chat'.

As a child, he'd always been teacher's pet. It wasn't that he'd gone out of his way to ingratiate himself to his teachers or professors or chief superintendents. While relating to his fellow students or colleagues had always been a mystery, appeasing those over him had come naturally. Right up until he became Inspector Robbie Lewis' sergeant…then all bets had been off.

He had never been particularly comfortable as the chief superintendent's golden boy, but he was even less so being in her bad graces. He wasn't quite sure what it was between the DCS and DI Lewis that kept them at odds with one another. They were both good, decent people dedicated to their jobs and to the police force. They should have gotten on like a house on fire…instead they were oil and water, and he was messily left sloshing back and forth between them.

The problem, he thought, came down to job descriptions. They both defined Lewis' job as solving crimes quickly and efficiently with a minimum of fanfare. However, Innocent thought it also included a good deal of public relations (including speeches) and a basic awareness of social niceties. While Lewis thought it was her job to run interference so he could do his without all that nonsense—and he didn't mind letting her know it. Hathaway wondered what sort of a chief superintendent Innocent's predecessor had been to let Lewis reach the ripe old age of inspector with such a belief intact.

But, then…good, old Morse again. From all accounts, he'd believed a detective's job was to detect and everyone else's was to stay out of the way and let him get on with it however he saw fit. Whether that was at the local pub or from his sofa at home while his sergeant did all the legwork and public relating. Hathaway supposed it was possible that the then DCS Strange had been more than willing to be the sort of chief superintendent Lewis seemed to expect Innocent to be in order to get the kind of results Morse had consistently turned in. Because, however Morse had gone about the job, he'd been very successful at it.

Innocent was a completely different kettle of fish if that were the case. As Hathaway learned all over again during their 'little chat'. He found himself coming decidedly down on the side of Inspector Lewis though the chief superintendent never gave him a chance to express his view or explain his reasons. There were reasons, good reasons, why Lewis hadn't signed off on the case as a suicide. They just weren't all…substantiated or…clear cut…or—well, even if she had let him speak, Hathaway might not have been able to convince her they were valid reasons in the face of the coroner's report, but…

He should have tried.

When she'd had her say and huffed out of the office, he'd been angrier at himself and his silence than he'd been at Innocent. And he was more than angry at her.


	4. Collaborating with the Enemy

_Collaborating with the Enemy_

Had he known when he'd left the station to rendezvous with Lewis what he intended or had the thought 'forget this' just came to him as he walked beside the inspector? He wasn't sure. He'd stopped on the way to buy Lewis a coffee, and looking back he suspected that had been his last ditch attempt to square his loyalty to Lewis with his silence. A kind of 'here, Sir, I'm betraying you, but I feel real bad about it and hope you won't take it personally' sort of gesture that he hadn't quite been able to carry off.

Lewis had accepted the coffee with a 'thanks' and not a hint of suspicion or disappointment, but if Hathaway had meant it to appease his own conscience it hadn't worked. In the end, he couldn't please both Innocent and Lewis. He liked his job and siding with either one of them put it in jeopardy. Raise Innocent's ire, and he just might not have a job at all. Alienate Lewis, and the job might not be worth having.

"I just received a rather bracing lecture from our chief superintendent," he told Lewis, wondering just how far he was prepared to go with his disclosure. He couldn't please them both, but he did have to live with himself. Not warning Lewis about Innocent's unequivocal pronouncement was not something with which he could live, but that didn't mean he was prepared to follow the inspector all the way to the Jobs Centre.

"Sure you're a better person for it," Lewis told him.

"I'm not to discuss it with you."

If Lewis understood the seriousness of the situation, he downplayed it. "Quite right. What'd she say?"

"In short, you've been told you're not to commit overburdened resources—that's me—to the investigation of this case. And that it's not a case; it's a statistic. I'm sorry, but she made me bloody mad, and I didn't stick up for you, and I just feel ashamed," he admitted.

Oddly, Lewis seemed to take her side. "She's got a point," he said without heat.

"No. She doesn't," Hathaway asserted.

"Yeah."

"She doesn't. We've received information from a legitimate source." And no wonder he hadn't known how to convince Innocent of the reasons the case needed investigated when Lewis himself argued against the legitimacy of his own source. It was Hathaway who had to assure Lewis Le Plassiter would come through. "I found Stoker," he told Lewis. Gone for the moment was his earlier belief that the professor's deal was just a scam and Le Plassiter would give them nothing even if they found Stoker.

"Look," Lewis said, "we've both been warned off this case. Now I'm old and bloody-minded enough to not do as I'm told, but you're clever—you should know better."

Hathaway had been told he was clever or smart or too intelligent for his own good for as long as he could remember. Somewhere along the line, he'd taken a hard look at those around him and realized it was true. It should have been a source of pride or pleasure but it proved too often to be a hindrance. There was the whole 'pride goeth before a fall' thing which was a misquote but not altogether untrue.* And it was hardly something for which he could take credit…just the way he'd come out. And, sadly, intelligence was one thing; wisdom, what the Bible called 'the principal thing,' was something else altogether.** He might have the brains, but he found out all too often he didn't always have the wisdom to know how to use them.

Still, in this case, he realized he did know what he needed to do whether it was brains or bloody-mindedness that led to it. "I do," he said, "and I've decided the best course of action is to continue investigating the case with you, unofficially, against the rules."

It hadn't been easy for him to come that decision, and he expected Lewis to acknowledge what it had cost him with a 'thanks' or 'I appreciate that' or something. Instead, he got an empty coffee cup to dispose of somewhere and a "Well, if that's the case…" followed by instructions of what to do next as his part of their little insurrection.

"Fix me up a whole rogue's gallery of all the faces in the case, but put it somewhere where Innocent's not going to see it if she pokes her head in to have a moan," Lewis told him. He raised a warning hand and added, "And I didn't say that, so you can't quote me." And then he'd gone to 'see the granny.' Hathaway was left standing there with the inspector's empty cup wondering what it was that had just made him put his career in danger for the man.

Lewis was ready to give Le Plassiter more than enough rope to hang them both on Morse's say-so.

Was Hathaway just as ready to hand his own head to Innocent on a platter on that same say-so? For reasons he couldn't begin to explain, that answer seemed to be a resounding 'yes.' He went back to the station (slinking carefully around Innocent's office—wasn't it late enough she should be off to Mr. Innocent by now?) and pulled the photographs.

He was staring at them for inspiration when Lewis opened the office door and made Hathaway jump guiltily. He threw a startled glance at the door, causing the inspector to do the same. But the hallway was empty of lurking chief superintendents.

Lewis closed the door behind him and came over to examine Hathaway's handiwork. He reached out and switched the photos of the two women. Lewis wasn't the kind of inspector who was always correcting and redoing his sergeant's work, but, even if he had been, Hathaway knew he had not paired the couples up incorrectly. He blinked at the reconfiguration in disbelief.

"I've seen the wedding photos," Lewis assured him and then went on to explain about the 'redistribution of marriage partners' between the two couples. "They were happy with it," he ended.

Hathaway found that incredibly unlikely. "So happy Rachel killed herself," he said.

"She didn't kill herself! I would stake the crumbling remains of my career on it. That girl was murdered," Lewis said with none of his previous certainty shaken by the coroner's report or Innocent's opinions. Hathaway could only hope that staking the not yet crumbling but possibly shaky beginnings of his own career on it was a wise move.

*Proverbs 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

**Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.


	5. A Confession

_A Confession_

He wasn't sure they were well-advised to trust in Morse's outdated judgment of Le Plassiter. Nonetheless, he believed his faith in Lewis was well-founded. So off he went the next day to speak to Stoker. And if he'd distrusted the wisdom of placing their careers in the hands of a man like Le Plassiter before he met Stoker…he was convinced it was worse than foolhardy after meeting him.

He returned to the office with grave misgivings about carrying on with the Le Plassiter angle.

The information Lewis brought back with him did nothing to bolster Hathaway's peace of mind. The sergeant listened in dismay as Lewis told him the sad story of the day Rachel Mallory's parents had driven to Beachy Head and jumped off the cliff.

"Hayward's selling me suicide as some bad family habit," Lewis concluded.

"Well, it often is," Hathaway said gloomily.

Though Hathaway's rather-dubious belief in the case was shaken by the news, Lewis remained unmoved. "Not this family," he said. Still, even he must have been somewhat discouraged. "Tell me something encouraging," he ordered. Hathaway was happy to note that was far better than demanding he find the inspector a dead body or two.

"Stoker has agreed to see Le Plassiter," Hathaway began.

"Oh, good!" Lewis said. Before Hathaway could tell him that he wasn't so sure how good it really was, Lewis frowned over his watch and made as though to leave.

"He's fragile," Hathaway hurried on. Lewis gave him an 'I'm listening, but I'm also out the door' look. Hathaway dug in because he was all too aware he might not get a chance later. "Look, can I say this now? I think we're staking a lot on a conversation between a dying man and a terminally damaged one."

Lewis paused in his rush out the door to listen, but the only response Hathaway got before the inspector hurried off to wherever he was going was a very unsatisfactory 'Yep'. Not at all what the sergeant had been hoping for. "Yep," he repeated to the empty office. Which, it seemed, was almost as helpful as voicing his concerns to Lewis.

So, it only figured that Hathaway with all of his misgivings was the one who ended up charged with offering up Stoker like a sacrificial lamb to Le Plassiter. Hathaway tried to put Stoker at ease…or as close as he was likely to get facing the man who had ruined his life. Unsurprisingly, the attempt was a dismal failure. Hathaway wished he'd never bothered to find the boy. And despite the fact that George Stoker was several years older than the sergeant, he seemed still a boy. It was almost as though the serious and quite brilliant grammar school student who had come up to Oxford in 1989 with such high hopes was still there trapped within the sad, burnt-out, and hopeless shell of a man. Stoker blamed the years on antidepressants and who knew what other drugs; Hathaway blamed Le Plassiter who had had that hopeful young student sent down not for Stoker's own sins but for his own.

It was with a great deal of regret and foreboding that he led Stoker to where Le Plassiter waited for them. The great hall was empty except for the old blind man. Hathaway couldn't bring himself to even address him. He'd been fairly horrified hearing Le Plassiter's account of how he had sent Stoker away in shame and ignominy knowing that he had no recourse, no way to right the wrong being done to him. And, now, having seen the devastation the professor's cruelty had wrought in Stoker's life, Hathaway could hardly stand to be in the man's presence even without the blond boy incident.

He found a seat at the end of the long room and steeled himself to stay quiet and endure the interview. Poor Stoker with his damaged mind and broken life had been brave enough to agree to it; the least Hathaway could do was sit through it.

It was more a confession than an interview. At least the old man had it in him to admit that he'd ruined Stoker's life and to say he was sorry. Le Plassiter had insisted Hathaway leave the room halfway through their first meeting, but it was Stoker who asked him to leave this time round. Hathaway couldn't, even if he had been willing. He wasn't there to play a part in this sad little reunion. Nor was he there of his own free will.

The professor must have been able to hear that he was making no move to leave. "Go," he urged. "What's he going to do? Kill me? If that's what he's after, he's going to have to hurry."

"When you give me something, I'll go," Hathaway told him. It was as simple as that. Le Plassiter had promised them information in exchange for their finding Stoker. They'd kept their end of the bargain whether they should have or not; time Le Plassiter paid up. "Until then, I stay."

"Jane Templeton." A name and that was it. Hathaway rose and walked out of the room, hoping the price they'd paid for that name hadn't been too high. He left the room, but he didn't leave Stoker to the old man. He stood in the hallway with a clear view of Stoker writing out his…whatever it was while Le Plassiter waited patiently for him to finish. Hathaway himself was rather impatiently pulling up information on his mobile. There was a Jane Templeton in Oxford…at least that part was true. He texted Lewis a terse 'call me' and watched George Stoker pick up the paring knife from the tray near where he'd been writing his message.

Had Stoker decided to speed Le Plassiter on his way to whatever awaited him in the afterlife? Hathaway wouldn't have thought he was capable of such an act, but he'd been surprised before. Should he intervene? Well, of course, if Stoker in any way threatened the old man, he would have to step in. But, until then? Was it safe for him to stand in the hall and watch Stoker approach the old man? He was torn between trusting his instincts cautioning him to wait and see and rushing in to stop whatever was going to happen before it could…

He tried to imagine what Lewis would do…it was impossible to guess though. Sometimes the inspector reacted to situations before Hathaway even realized there was a need to act—like this case, in fact. Other times, Lewis would sit calmly while common sense and every nerve in Hathaway's body was screaming for action. Experience? Intuition? Just dumb luck? They hadn't worked together long enough for Hathaway to know for sure which it was, but it invariably proved to be the right course of action. He should have asked—demanded—the older officer explain why he did what he did and didn't do what he didn't, and then maybe he would have had a better idea of what to do about Stoker and that knife.

He hesitated one minute and then another while Stoker absolved Le Plassiter of his guilt by reading the note he had written. "I don't believe it's possible to put my life right," Stoker concluded, "but yours it seems can be repaired by my forgiveness. It is in my power to make life better for one of us. I forgive you, Dr. Le Plassiter, completely and unconditionally. It's unnecessary for you to think of the matter ever again. The incident is closed."

Stoker had been powerless to defend himself against Dr. Le Plassiter's attack all those years before. He had had no money, no strings to pull, no connections…he'd been helpless. But, here in the same college all these years later…he was the one with the power.

Hathaway breathed a sigh of relief when Stoker opened his hand and released the knife. He knew he had just witnessed something profound; Stoker had had all the power and he'd used it to do good, to return good unto the man who had done evil to him. So many cases, so many crimes…so many of them came down to vengeance. But, here was Stoker, wounded and damaged, showing more strength of character, more humanity, more integrity, and more forgiveness than Hathaway had ever witnessed even in the priesthood.


	6. Rowing with Jane

_Rowing with Jane_

There was no time to dwell on what he had seen though. Almost immediately he was on his way to meet Lewis at 64 Hinckley Rise, the address he'd found for Jane Templeton. And just as he'd sat through that eye appointment with a murderer at the beginning of the case, here in the middle of it, he stood and talked to Lewis while Jane Templeton sat dead inside her garage.

There was no time to tell the inspector about what had passed between Stoker and Le Plassiter, and no time for Lewis to tell him that the case was now officially a murder enquiry. There was only time for the frantic, far-too-late rescue after Lewis realized a car was running in the closed garage. The mad dash to pull the limp, unresponsive woman seated in the backseat of that car to safety while they choked on the fumes and their lungs cried out for good air. And Lewis' dismayed and uncharacteristic, "You're dead, aren't you, you stupid girl," to the woman they both automatically knew was Jane Templeton.

Standing, heaving over them, Hathaway thought he must have heard that wrong. The compassion he'd come to expect from the inspector's chats with the dead was there in Lewis' tone, but there was along with the rather harsh words an underlying anger there as well. But, then, he'd only ever heard Lewis actually address their _victims_, hadn't he? The murderer caught in his own web, the jumper, and the man who'd 'taken the gentleman's way out'…Lewis had had nothing to say to them, had he? Or maybe he had, and as none of it had been anything good, he'd followed his mother's advice and hadn't said anything at all.

There was no time for Hathaway to be standing there giving it due consideration, but that's what he did. He stood there pondering over that 'stupid girl' comment and staring at the woman with a nagging feeling that he should know her while Lewis fought to save her. Lewis had to call for him to get an ambulance _twice_ before Hathaway was able to force himself to act. Because for all the dead bodies the sergeant had dealt with in his short police career, he'd had very little experience in the presence of the dying. Lewis must have known—"You're dead, aren't you?" he'd asked her before he'd ever begun CPR—but Hathaway…he'd trusted there was still a chance to fight death back. Believed it even, while he'd stood there utterly useless letting Lewis battle on alone.

After, when it was over, when Lewis had given up all hope of keeping her among the living and sat heaving and disheartened beside her corpse… Hathaway had stood halfway between the car and Lewis and the dead woman, the resuscitation kit that he'd taken so long to retrieve dangling uselessly in his hand, and felt horribly responsible and full of regret.

Lewis, speaking to the dead once again, said, "You didn't want to gas yourself in your car, Janey. Somebody made you." And somehow those words were almost an apologetic acknowledgment of sorts. There must have been something the inspector had observed or sensed or just _felt_ as he'd battled to pull her back from death's icy grip that had changed his opinion about Templeton…something that made her deserving of his sympathy, something that called this 'suicide' something else entirely.

Hathaway ran a trembling hand over his head and covered his face with it. Whether Lewis was right and this too was a murder or whether Templeton had indeed wanted to gas herself in her car, she was dead now. And Hathaway had done precious little to change that fact.

Why hadn't he moved? Why hadn't he made the call and dashed to grab the kit from the car the moment they'd pulled her from the garage? Why had he stood there dumbly staring at her face and trying to figure out where he had seen her before instead of trying to help save her? Why had he stood by and let her die?


	7. Pursuing Enguiries

_Pursuing Enquiries_

After Hobson and SOCO and the ambulance slowly pulled away carrying her dead body to the mortuary, Lewis had bought him a couple of pints and with his steady presence pushed back Hathway's distress over what had transpired at 64 Hinckley Rise. There'd been time then to tell Lewis about Le Plassiter's contrition and Stoker's act of forgiveness.

Whatever the inspector had felt about Hathaway's failure to act quickly and decisively in the battle of life and death they'd just fought and about Stoker's moment of greatness, he kept it to himself. He merely nodded an acknowledgement and took a long drink of his juice before saying, "Le Plassiter knows more…and he won't be taking it with him when he goes, I'll tell you that. Maybe we should haul him down to the nick on obstructing an investigation charges after all. The man's playing games while people are being picked off one by one."

He took another drink and then continued, "It might cheer you up to know that Hobson's opinion of Dr. Cook is even less than my own. A complete ninny, she called him. And she's reversed his findings… someone strangled Rachel Mallory and then put her over that banister half an hour later—Innocent's going to love it, eh?"

"Not likely," Hathaway answered.

Lewis shrugged his indifference to Innocent's probable reaction. He swirled the dregs of his glass around and took one last drink. "Back to work," he said.

Hathaway grimaced and Lewis sighed. "What is it now?" he asked.

"Well…just that…the restaurant on Banbury Road, Sir? What's that about? Stephanie Fielding…do you really think it's wise to be—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Hathaway! I'm not dating the woman! She might be able to shed some light on the case. She knows them all. Nothing more to it than that—I'll not be forgetting this is a murder enquiry and botching up the investigation!" He stood up and frowned down at the sergeant. "Come on. I'll drop you back at the nick on my way to the mortuary…no need for you to chance suspension now that you don't have to. You can get busy on rechecking the alibis of those Summertown jokers, and I'll drive you back to get your car later."

Good, old-fashioned police work wasn't all it was cracked up to be, Hathaway thought for not the first time as he went back through statements and made call after call rechecking his own rechecking. Lewis did eventually show up as promised to ferry him out to fetch his car. On the way, the inspector filled Hathaway in on what he'd learned from Hobson.

So. He could have delayed making that call for hours and crawled after the resuscitation kit, and she would have been no more dead than she'd been when they'd broken into the garage and pulled her from her car…Hathaway wasn't sure that made any difference at all in his performance that afternoon, but it did make him feel slightly better.

"By the way," Lewis added casually, "Hobson sends her love." And what that was about Hathaway wasn't sure he wanted to know.

The next order of business was irritating the bereaved. It didn't take them long to deliver the bad news that Rachel's death was murder, and it had only been the first. The families could expect to continually find Lewis and/or Hathaway turning up at inopportune times until the murderer was safely behind bars…like it or not.

As they walked away from the cozy little scene, Hathaway said, "Family life, eh, Sir?"

"Yeah, and I miss it."

Hathaway didn't find it difficult to imagine Lewis roasting marshmallows with his two children back in the day. He could even vaguely remember similar evenings when he'd been a child himself. But, he was quite sure that the scene from his own childhood and that of Lewis and his children had never been nor ever would have been so macabre. A family cookout in the cool, dark night—seemed as likely a way as any to mourn…or not. Hathaway decided that it was for the children's sakes. A stab at normalcy that was bound to fail simply by the irrefutable truth that Mummy was dead and no amount of gooey, sticky marshmallows was going to change that.

"I was being ironic," he said.

"Even an ironic family life; I'd settle for that," Lewis said. He happened at that moment to glance at his watch and off he ran to the restaurant on Banbury Road. Hathaway frowned after him. Lewis' expense account was not likely to stretch enough to cover starters at a place like that, let alone a meal…and the man was incredibly vulnerable and unbelievably naïve when it came to women. He might only be meeting with Stephanie Fielding to further their enquiries, but that could quickly get out of hand…especially with Lewis looking longingly back to a time when he'd had a family life.

Hathaway sighed and walked purposely towards his car. Not his place to worry about Lewis' social life and emotional well-being. The case though...definitely within his job description to question if Lewis was about to compromise the investigation.

The investigation. Yes, they most definitely had one now. Just like Lewis had known from those first few minutes sitting on the Mallory's stairs chatting with Rachel. But, they were no closer to knowing why she'd died or who had killed her, no closer to answering the questions Lewis had had looking up at her dangling body. And Hathaway, who hadn't even known enough to ask the questions then, had no idea how to answer them now. He was no help to the man at all, was he? No answers and only questions of his own as though he could believe for a minute that Lewis would botch the investigation carrying on with someone directly tied to one of their murder victims.

Hathaway shook his head at his own foolishness and went off to play music with guys who asked nothing of him but that he show up for practice and the occasional gig. It was in the middle of a rather simple song that he realized there was one avenue of investigation they had not yet covered. The guys in his band groaned when he fumbled the notes, but he was so glad to have something constructive to contribute to the case that it hardly mattered.

It wasn't that he had nothing to do in the normal course of the investigation. Bright and early in the morning he made a very reluctant trip back to pump Le Plassiter for details about Jane Templeton.

"If he pulls 'a blond boy' just tell him I'm still having a lie-in from all those big words he threw at me, and he'll just have to make-do with you" Lewis told Hathaway as he sent him on his way. The professor wasn't any happier to see—well, to find—Hathaway at his door than the sergeant was to be there; but, in the end, Le Plassiter condescended to fill in a few of the huge gaps surrounding their second murder victim. (Not thoroughly as it turned out but enough to give them a start.)

"Unmarried, only child, no immediate family, civil servant of some description—I'm working on that, no clubs, no hobbies, no friends, bloody bleak frankly," he told Lewis when they met up to explore Hathaway's idea from the evening before.

Lewis grunted and let Templeton go for the moment. Hathaway nodded to himself in satisfaction…he'd gotten what needed gotten then. Hadn't forgotten any of the important things that would force him to trek once again back to the college and Le Plassiter. Lewis trusted him to take what he'd learned and follow up on it to fill in the cracks without feeling that he had to enumerate each step. Hathaway was of some use after all.

"What about Le Plassiter?" Lewis asked.

Hathaway reported on the old man's degrading health and concluded with, "He wishes to die in college."

"Fine by me," Lewis said. "But not 'till he's talked to us. Now tell me why we're here?"

"Psychology," Hathaway told him though he had no idea just how apt that answer would be at the time.


	8. A Meeting with the Head Master

_A Meeting With the Head Master_

They entered the building and were directed to the headmaster's office. His door was firmly closed, so they were forced to wait in the hallway. Absently petting the cat at the end of the cushioned bench where they sat, Hathaway said, "What's the true common denominator between Rachel's friends?"

"Wife-swapping," Lewis guessed but seeing Hathaway wasn't all that pleased with that answer added, "I don't know…where they went to school?"

"Where their children went to school," Hathaway corrected. At that the door finally opened and Martin Croft the headmaster of Park Town Preparatory School came out to thoroughly embarrass himself and Lewis. Hathaway blamed the cat…if it hadn't been hogging the end of the bench Mr. Croft would not have jumped to the wrong conclusion about the two of them. Hathaway found the whole misunderstanding laughable, but it was obvious Lewis had no clue what the man was on about.

"Darling, I think you should explain," Hathaway said. He nudged Lewis and took his hand. The surprised, bewildered look on Lewis' face was soon replaced by a scowl, and in short order the misunderstanding was put straight.

As far as Hathaway could see Croft had little to offer the investigation except…psychology. He sent them off to speak to his wife who just happened to be the school psychologist. Patient confidentiality kept Dr. Croft from discussing the children, but, as she said, it was open season as far as the parents were concerned. Not that she had anything to tell them that cast suspicion on any of them. There wasn't anyone in Rachel's circle that the psychologist considered wired for murder. And so Hathaway's grand idea didn't go far towards helping answer Lewis' questions.

At least that's what he thought and would continue to think, but in actuality it went a long way in furthering the investigation. Hathaway's casual warning to the headmaster that they might need to 'pop back in for a bit of a rummage' and Croft's obvious unease at that idea gave Lewis an opening into the case. In time, by age and guile as he would later tell Hathaway, Lewis would use that opening to gain access to those confidential patient records Dr. Croft had been unable to turn over to him. And those reports would figure heavily in saving the lives of two little girls.


	9. Interviewing a Murderer

_Interviewing a Murderer_

Leaving the school, Hathaway was not only unhappy about what he saw as his failure to help the case along, but he was also once again fighting a contact. And, that's when he remembered where he'd seen Jane Templeton before and unwittingly opened the case the tiniest crack.

For Hugh Mallory had also seen Jane Templeton that day, and during the subsequent interview fissures began to appear in his once charming demeanor. Not enough to make either Lewis or Hathaway immediately peg him as a murderer—not with his receptionist's sure testimony that Mallory had never left the clinic on the day in question. But, enough to show his wiring might not be as good as Dr. Croft had assumed. Grief and loss could have accounted for Mallory's less than stellar performance, and he readily enough agreed to speak to Jane Templeton if that was what they required of him—if he'd known she was already dead, he deserved a BAFTA.

Mallory did have a few things of interest to say, though it was difficult to know if they advanced their investigation at all. There was one line that would have been very telling if they'd known then the story of Allison Bright and that she and Rachel had been one and the same person.

"Rachel just loved sewing. She liked to mend things, join things back together," Mallory had said. Oh, yes, she would have that, wouldn't she? Though 'like' perhaps wasn't the right word. 'Compelled' more like. But, they couldn't know that then, and so, it seemed irrelevant to their enquiries. The bit about Hugh's concern over what might come from her helping strangers…pure hogwash in retrospect. A red herring he'd waved under their noises hoping they'd quit looking so close to home.

And the other thing? Hathaway, who had stood there and seen and heard the interchange between Stoker and Le Plassiter, hadn't agreed with it at all.

"It's a mistake to believe that being the recipient of a confession puts one in a place of authority," Hugh had pontificated though Hathaway hadn't quite followed how he'd arrived at that point. "It's the person who does the confessing that has the power. They have a claim on one, somehow." Lewis might have wondered then just who had been confessing what to whom; Hathaway instead remembered that day in the hall. Le Plassiter in confessing to Stoker had yielded to him all of his authority; and Stoker in receiving that confession had gained all the power. Mallory, Hathaway concluded, didn't know what he was talking about.

But, he did, of course. And, he knew it was just as much rubbish as Hathaway. For, he'd been the recipient of Allison Bright's confession, and, with it, she'd yielded to him not only what power and authority she had had but also her very life.


	10. Interrogating the Dying

_Interrogating the Dying_

Following their interview with Mallory, it was back to the 'old-fashioned, boring police work' for Hathaway. Boring, long, and utterly fruitless as far as this case was unfolding. Thankfully, Lewis arrived with those very important case reports on the Mallory and Hayward children containing that small, life-saving quote. Case reports that indicated there was nothing untoward in either of the families. The kids were, as Lewis summed it up, 'just loved around the clock'. And, yet, the inspector sensed something less savoury between their lines.

"Can you smell that…smell?" he asked, sniffing unhappily. Hathaway couldn't, but he trusted Lewis' nose…there was something about this case that just wasn't right.

Lewis took one last bite from the sandwich he'd grabbed from the plate full of them sitting there, put the crust back amongst the other untouched ones still on the plate, and they headed off to wake up Le Plassiter.

Le Plassiter was busy dying and was no more interested in answering Lewis' questions about Jane Templeton than the dead ever were in answering him.

It seemed that Lewis had far less patience with the dying than with the already dead. Or maybe it was just to Le Plassiter himself that Lewis objected. "Professor, unless you talk to me, I shall stay right here, asking you questions, while you are trying to die elegantly," he told him.

Hathaway suspected Lewis was as surprised as anyone when that prompted the answers for which they had come. The sad, disturbing tale of Allison Bright and that of Templeton and the man watchers…they learned it all—or almost all. Le Plassiter faded away before they'd learned everything they would have liked, but it was one more chink in the armour.

With what Le Plassitor had given them, they reviewed 'the known inhabitants of Rachelworld' and where did that get them? Hugh Mallory had loved her and seemed to have nothing to hide. It was very likely he hadn't known about Rachel's beginnings as Allison Bright.

Lewis smelled something stinky about David Hayward, but he wasn't sure that made him their murderer. "He was married to the woman," he said. Hathaway wondered how after all the spousal murders he'd seen in his long career Lewis thought that made any difference whatsoever, but he let it pass.

Louise Hayward, the woman David now claimed as his wife? "Not her," Lewis stated without reason or evidence. His sergeant who disliked the woman's flaunting of David and his fine collection of modern money noted his inspector's view without necessarily agreeing with it.

And then there was the woman whose presence in the case concerned Hathaway the most. He threw in her name cautiously, half-expecting to get an ear's full about putting her name in the pot. But, maybe he really was reading too much into the whole Banbury Road thing, because Lewis didn't blink an eye at her name joining the other suspect characters in their list. "Well…opportunity, yeah," Lewis said. "Home all day, movements only corroborated by her son."

"Motive?" Hathaway asked.

"Jealousy of a happy marriage?" Lewis suggested with a shrug. "It's possible." Obviously, Lewis didn't think it was all that likely, and Hathaway had to concur with his assessment on that one. Moving on then to Le Plassiter.

Lewis laughed and said, "Wouldn't that be good? How would that work?"

"On the phone, moving his pawns about," Hathaway offered.

It was Lewis who named Stoker. "Not a pawn," Hathaway said with as much certainty as Lewis had dismissed Louise; more even. With as much certainty as Lewis had pronounced Rachel Mallory's death murder.

"No," Lewis agreed. "But he's a lost soul." That was Hugh Mallory's description of those who had been in need of a friend or advocate and found their way into Rachel's life. At the time, Hathaway assumed Lewis was using the statement to define Stoker. Later, after they'd learned from Le Plassiter that there was a possibility that Rachel and Stoker had actually met, Hathaway would wonder if Lewis hadn't actually been suggesting that perhaps Stoker was one of _Rachel's_ lost souls.

It was possible Lewis had been about to make that leap—that very important leap to come to a place which like the case files would go a long way towards saving the lives of those two little girls. If so, he was derailed by a ringing mobile. Lewis at first mistook it as Hathaway's, but it was his own.

"Ahh…Innocent's got herself into a proper snit," Lewis reported after the call. He needn't have; Hathaway had heard her angry, brittle voice coming through loud and clear. "Back to the station, then. I'll see what Her Majesty's all het up about, and you can make yourself useful solving this case…I'm fed up to here with it!"

There was plenty of busywork for Hathaway to occupy himself with while waiting for Innocent's rant to run its course so he could find out from Lewis what it was all about. It wasn't the first time the inspector had gotten a proper dressing-down from the chief superintendent, and it was unlikely to be the last. Hathaway was curious and just the least bit concerned over what had 'Her Majesty' so up in arms.

He got the gist of it on the ride back to the college for what Lewis called 'one last dance' with Le Plassiter. After hearing Lewis' account of his interview with Innocent, Hathaway wasn't sure if that 'last' was indicative of how close Le Plassiter was to meeting his Maker or how close Lewis was to bringing the crumbling remains of his career down on his own head.

"It was the right thing to do," Lewis reasserted. "Couldn't pass up such an opportunity, now could I?" Hathaway thought it best to keep his opinion of that to himself. He was vaguely aware that there was something about that cocktail party that Lewis wasn't sharing with him, and he had uneasy feeling it had something to do with the kids' case reports that Lewis had somehow managed to get his hands on regardless of that little thing called 'patient confidentiality'.

As far as his sergeant had ever known, Lewis always played things straight. If he'd stepped over a line or even just skirted one, Hathaway didn't want to know about. And, Lewis was unlikely to tell him anyway.

Almost as unlikely as Le Plassiter was to tell them anything more. He looked dangerously close to checking out before their last dance. Hathaway thought the old man was far too gone to give them anything else, but Inspector Lewis was nothing if not determined.

"Here I am, Sir, as promised. Ruining the moment," he said into the man's ear. "And don't pretend to be dead…it's bad manners and it won't work."

Le Plassiter took a deathbed rattle of a deep breath and gasped out, "You are a frightful little man. Why should I tell you anything?" The frightful little man let the insult pass without comment, and he let his sergeant take control of the interview.

Hathaway, who'd had more than a little training at deathbed confessions if not experience, took it easily. "You can't go to your death unshriven. Your soul must be clean."

Le Plassiter dredged up the energy to laugh weakly and asked, "Do I detect the whiff of Papism at my bedside? How delightful."

Hathaway pressed on, "You must tell us what we need to know to catch this killer. That is your true act of contrition." Le Plassiter may have laughed, but Hathaway had not read him wrong; the man wanted to tell what he knew before he died.

Against all the rules, he and Rachel Mallory had spoken several times. He'd told her of the evil he'd rained on Stoker, and by her example, she'd caused the professor to know he needed to seek forgiveness for it. Most importantly, Le Plassiter informed them that he believed Rachel had found and spoken to Stoker—and then the professor had begun his last dance with death.

Hathaway would have let the old man go, but Lewis motioned for the sergeant to continue. "You're about to stand before your God," Hathaway warned the old man though it was obvious Le Plassiter was already well aware of that fact.

"The head shrink," the dying man gasped out, and that was the last thing he said except to plead with them to leave him to die alone. There was nothing else for them to do but leave him to it. Lewis headed off to clear up a few things with Dr. Croft, and Hathaway was left to his own devices.


	11. Sharing Secrets

_Sharing Secrets_

Hathaway wasn't privy to the interview with the psychologist or a follow-up interview with David Hayward. Still, he wasn't completely surprised when Lewis, who'd left him not that long before presumably just as much in the dark as Hathaway was himself, called and with more than a fair degree of certainty said, "Tell you what I think. I think Hugh Mallory's dirty."

Hathaway hadn't thought it was Hugh, more because he hadn't wanted it to be than anything else. He'd sat there in the same room with the man and smiled at his charm and answered his questions and…if he'd already strangled his wife with his bare hands and strung her up over her freshly hoovered stairs. If Hugh Mallory was her murderer—Hathaway didn't want to believe it.

But, he did. He didn't have to hear Lewis' reasons for coming to that conclusion. That would come later. Lewis often made leaps his sergeant couldn't follow; and Hathaway had learned to trust those leaps. Especially, when there was just that tone in Lewis' voice. A tinge of exultation mixed with a touch of disgust. Somehow conveying very clearly Lewis' enjoyment in solving a mystery and his hate of the crime at its heart. When Hathaway heard that, he could be sure Lewis _knew_ who done it.

Hathaway had barely stopped his car at Mallory's when Lewis raced up in his; they'd both made good time. But not good enough. Louise Hayward was bleeding in the doorway, and Hugh Mallory was nowhere in sight. Lewis ran off to…well, Hathaway couldn't guess, while he checked an ambulance was on its way and got the sorry story from a frightened and vulnerable Louise.

"He hit her with the kettle," Hathaway told Lewis when he reappeared on scene. He couldn't hear it in his own voice, but it was there loud and clear anyway. Lewis' sergeant was just as disgusted with people doing bad things to other people as the inspector was himself.

"Where's he gone?" Lewis asked as though he assumed Hathaway would know.

Sometimes that actually worked. "To pick up the kids." Hathaway could tell him because when he'd called Mrs. Mallory to find out where her son might be going, she'd told him he was on his way to her house.

Lewis' next words horrified Hathaway, "In that case, we have a problem—because Mallory's the killer, and he hasn't finished killing yet. Get to them before he does!" And Hathaway who hadn't wanted to alarm Mrs. Mallory when he had had her on the phone and so hadn't warned her to not let her son have the kids was filled with an awful dread.

"Where will you be, Sir?" Hathaway called after Lewis' departing back.

Lewis shot back, "Intimidating his receptionist," and didn't slow down. Hathaway didn't even have time to register his surprise that Lewis wasn't going after the kids with him; he was already running to his own car. But, he wasn't fast enough. Hugh Mallory had come and gone and taken the two little girls with him by the time he arrived at Mrs. Mallory's home. She watched him in puzzled alarm as he paced about waiting for Lewis to pick up.

"He's taking the kids away for a surprise," he reported.

"Where's he taking them?"

Well, it had worked before, hadn't it? But this time…"Well, I don't know, or it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?" Hathaway told him. And, then, he added the unpalatable truth, "Sir, he's going to kill the kids and then he's going to kill himself."

"No, he's not, Hathaway. I won't allow it," Lewis assured him, and though he sounded just as sure about that as he had Rachel's murder and Mallory's guilt…this time Hathaway had trouble making himself believe it. He wanted to, desperately. But he couldn't shake his fear that they'd found their killer too late and then—then he'd let that killer get his hands on two innocent, little girls who were going to die because he'd failed to warn Granny.

"I've an idea," Lewis told him. "I'll be back at the station." And that was all Hathaway was given. No instructions of what he should be doing next, no reprimand for letting Mallory get his hands on the kids, no nothing. So what was he to do? Stay there in case Mrs. Mallory thought of something that would help locate her son and Rachel's little girls? Go back to the station and stand around waiting for Lewis' idea to bear fruit? Or go start filling out his papers because if those children died, that would be it.

Not one of those things stood any chance of saving the situation or Izzie and Anna Mallory. No, he had to do something constructive. Think, Hathaway, there has to be something…Stoker. Who might have been one of Rachel's lost souls, who might just have something rattling around in his broken mind that might possibly be what they needed.

It was the poorest of prospects, but it was all he had. He raced off and found Stoker still pushing trollies in the car park.

"I need to ask you something, Mr. Stoker," he said, wishing he didn't have to disturb the poor guy one more time. "You didn't ever meet, by any beautiful chance, Rachel Mallory?" He showed Stoker Rachel's photo and repeated her name, but Stoker stood absolutely still and didn't respond at all. Well, he shouldn't have hoped for anything more…Stoker had already given them more than they had had any right to ask him in agreeing to meet with Le Plassiter. "Thanks," the sergeant said and turned away.

And then Stoker came through in a very big way. "Allison," he said. Hathaway stopped in his hurry to rush away and very quickly came to the most important question of all.

"Did she tell you any other secrets besides her secret name? Did she tell you about the head shrink?"

Stoker smiled and Hathaway's long shot became a sure thing. " I'm the one who told her," the damaged, fragile man said. "The shrunken heads at the museum."

Barely daring to breath, Hathaway prodded him on, "Which museum?"

"The Oxford University Museum of Natural History."

"Thank you. Thank you very much!" Hathaway said. And then he was once again running for his car. Before he could reach it, Lewis was on the line saying he knew where Mallory and the kids were.

"So do I!" Hathaway said. He couldn't guess where Lewis had gotten his information, and there wasn't time to find out.


	12. A Conversation Through an Open Window

_A Conversation Through an Open Window_

There followed a mad dash to the museum and a wild chase through its echoing halls and up its winding staircase to the tower. And ended just those few steps too far behind Mallory and the girls at a locked door. Not a flimsy, modern door ready to fall apart before his battering. The real deal, heavy, solid…and what was Mallory doing behind it while he and Lewis fought to get it open?

Finally, they were through, and then it wasn't a wild dash but a careful, quiet entering, because Mallory sat in the large, open window with the girls beside him…and the ground beneath them was much too far away. Hathaway led the way through the door, but it was Lewis who quietly, and ever so carefully, inched his way nearer and nearer the window.

"Hugh," he said, "it might be a good idea—you know, health and safety—if the children came over my way a little bit." He leaned forward and stretched out his hand. The girls looked back at him, their faces pale and their eyes wide with fear and confusion. "Come on, kids," Lewis urged them, motioning them towards him with his hand in slow, careful movements.

"Stay where you are," the man they thought of as their father told them. They squirmed and complained in his too-tight grasp, but they stayed where they were.

Lewis tried another approach. "Okay. Look…I'm going to count to three—"

"No!" Mallory yelled and suddenly he was on his feet and pulling the girls up with him, and there was only open air and a deadly fall behind them. "I'm going to count to three. One."

"Hugh…"

"I can still see you!"

"Look at the kids, Hugh!"

"Two."

"Hugh! Look at them!" Lewis had lost his forced calm. His cry was desperate, and it sounded to Hathaway as though it was also hopeless. He stood helplessly by and tried not to imagine the sounds the girls would make as they felt the ground rushing up at them.

"Three!" Mallory said, but Lewis had meant it when he'd said he wouldn't allow Mallory to kill them. And though his sergeant and Hugh Mallory couldn't know it, he had danced this dance once before with a mad woman and a baby, and, not that many years in the future, he would dance it once again in a deserted, crumbling ruin of a hospital. He sprang forward before Hugh could act and grabbed hold of the girls. He pulled the little one—was she Anna or Izzie? Hathaway couldn't remember but he was there to take her from Lewis and pull her on to safety. Lewis was right behind them with her sister. And then there was only Mallory in the open window.

The sounds of sirens rose to them from the ground below and joined the girls' frightened whimpers and anxious cries and the harsh, adrenaline-fueled gasping of the men. Hathaway drew the girls back behind the huge, old display case full of dusty dinosaur bones and fossils. He would have liked to offer them some comfort or kindness, but what could he say or do to lessen the horror that the man who tucked them in at night and rocked them when they were sick had just planned to throw them out an open window?

The sirens outside should have meant that help was on the way, but there were no reassuring, welcome sounds of shoes pounding up the stairs…Hathaway couldn't very well leave Lewis to try to get Mallory out of that window on his own, but what was he supposed to do with the kids?

"Stay here for me, okay? Right here. Don't move," he told them. The older girl—Anna, wasn't it? He'd read the reports, and he'd typed up others, but he couldn't get his head around which girl was which—had reached out and latched onto a stuffed bobcat that had seen better days…but then hadn't they all? She gently petted the ratty, nasty-looking thing while staring with wide, frightened eyes at Mallory. The younger one whimpered and cried for her daddy. And Hathaway didn't know how to help them any more than he knew how to help Lewis talk Hugh Mallory down.

Lewis was back to the calm, quiet, slow, and careful approach. "Better for all the children if you're alive, surely. Even in prison," he told the man balanced precariously on the windowsill.

"Oh, will you give it a rest? What do you know? Your wife died. Boo-bloody-hoo. My wife wasn't even my wife, she was someone else's." The girls whimpered hearing the hard, angry voice coming from the once mild-mannered man. Hathaway shushed them gently and took advantage of Hugh's speech to sidle around the display case. "She belonged to everyone in the world except me," Hugh told Lewis. He gave no sign he was aware of the girls or Hathaway.

It was only Lewis, slowly easing his way closer and closer to Mallory and that open window, and Mallory. Lewis sought to keep him talking, keep him focused anywhere but the ground below him. He moved just the slightest bit closer and said, "Tell me, because I need to know if I've got it right. Templeton confronted Rachel…Rachel called you, said, 'Come home, now.'" Even in the extremity of the situation, Hathaway wondered, as he always did, why that sort of a line seemed to work for Lewis more often than not. How many times had some villain or another confessed to all manner of crimes and sins because Inspector Lewis wanted to be sure and get everything straight in his own head? Perhaps, Hathaway decided, in the end, everyone wants to be understood, and Lewis offered that chance.

Whatever the reason, it was working its magic on Hugh Mallory. The man seemed mesmerized by Lewis' soft voice guessing the whys and hows of Mallory's descent into murder. "And out it all came…Alison Bright. Everything."

There were tears on Mallory's cheeks as he said, "She told me about it, and I still loved her. I said 'We're stronger than this. A love like ours could burn down the city.'"

"But, she couldn't stop," Lewis guessed. "She had to tell you about Madagascar…everything built on a lie. Your love. Everything. Meaningless. So," and for Lewis too the moment must have condensed down to just the two of them though the girls were still making pitiful noises and Hathaway was inching forward right along with him. Because without any thought of sparing the girls further trauma, he finished the dreadful tale, "you strangled her." The girls—or maybe just the older one—cried out with dreadful understanding. Slowly working himself into a good position to make a grab for Mallory if Lewis' gambit fell through, Hathaway couldn't offer them any comfort.

"Silly thing is, the person you really wanted to hurt was David," Lewis said. By then, he was close enough that when Hugh closed his eyes and complained of being tired, it only took one step for Lewis to be at the man's side. He gently put an arm around him and led him away from the window. Hathaway, who felt as though he'd been wound tightly like a spring waiting to lunge forward for hours and hours, relaxed slightly.

But, then, Mallory exchanged a look with Lewis and saw…what did he see in the inspector's eyes that made him react so violently? Condemnation even though Lewis' voice had been full of compassion and understanding? Pity? Or was that glance just to assess his chances? To decide if he could take Lewis? Or determine if Lewis had the same faulty wiring he had and might be capable of stopping him?

Whatever Mallory saw in that searching look, he suddenly turned on Lewis, throwing him hard against…something large and brown and very substantial. There was the awful sound of Lewis' head hitting whatever it was and then Mallory was stumbling and going over and Hathaway was diving forward to make a grab for his legs. The girls screaming and nothing but silence from Lewis and the awful feel of empty air in Hathaway's hands…and then, somehow, someway, the bone-jarring pull of Mallory's weight in his right hand dragging Hathaway out the window after him.

Hathaway frantically braced himself as much as he could and held on for all he was worth. The girls were still crying and Lewis…where was Lewis? Was he still down? Was he dead? Was he in desperate need of help, and Hathaway halfway out the window with Mallory's life in his hand? Mallory who hadn't counted his own life worth living. But it wasn't like Hathaway could just let Hugh fall to his death so he could rush to Lewis' aid…that he couldn't do.

He could only hold onto Mallory's wrist and strain to keep his grip while every second Mallory's weight increased exponentially and every muscle in Hathaway's body cried out with the pain of it. He couldn't hold on forever. He needed help, but there was no one else—where was their back up? Down there on the ground when he needed them up here with him. He was on his own. But, he couldn't drag Mallory up and back through the window…not with the man fighting him. A dead weight at the best; a struggling, thrashing one pulling his arm from its socket or even him through the window at the worst.

Mallory was going to have to help him.

"You're holding onto my arm, Hugh…because you want to live," he said in a tight, strained voice as he looked into Mallory's eyes and demanded he acknowledge the truth in that statement. Mallory stared silently up at him. "Say it!" Hathaway ordered. He didn't have time to convince Mallory with words, and he wasn't Lewis anyway…he didn't have Lewis' way of taming the most violent criminal with nothing but his soft voice and understanding.

"Say it!" he spat out at the man. But words, soft or harsh, were useless. He held Mallory's gaze and released his grip on the man's wrist. "Say it," he told him one more time.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Mallory cried out, grasping onto Hathaway with a desperation that spoke as clearly and as loudly as his words. And then Hathaway was pulling for all he was worth and Mallory was grabbing for him with his other hand as well and scrabbling up the wall with his feet and Lewis—alive, then! Thank God!—helping them drag Hugh back from the precipice.

And then Mallory and Hathaway were through the window. The blessedly solid, hard, ungiving, dusty floor beneath them. Mallory was crying, and the girls were throwing themselves on him. And Hathaway was sitting there, gasping for air with his muscles screaming now from the sudden release of tension almost as much as they had under the incredible pull of Mallory's weight. And Lewis stood swaying over them, blood running down from a nasty-looking cut near his right eye, looking greyer than he had when he'd learned he had to give that speech to the press. And finally, there were footsteps running up the steps and it was over. Thank God it was over.

Paramedics patched Lewis back together and recommended ibuprofen, rest, and ice packs for Hathaway's strained muscles. Their murderer was taken off to the nick; Granny and the Hayward's arrived to gather the girls up into their arms and take them off to…well, wherever they were going for they no longer had a home. And then there was nothing for it but to face the music.


	13. A Quiet Word with Innocent

_A _Quiet_ Word with Innocent_

They'd saved Izzie and Anna Mallory that day and caught a murderer (quite literally as Hathaway's aching muscles and strained shoulder knew only too well), but Innocent wasn't happy with the way they'd managed it.

"Because of you, I have a migraine. Because, and only because of the migraine, I'm not going to raise my voice," she told them wearily with her hand to her head. The bruised and battered men standing in front of her wisely refrained from listing their own aches and pains in return.

"Thank you, Ma'am. That's a relief," Lewis murmured. Probably because, and only because, of her pounding head, Innocent didn't catch the meaning behind his words…his head couldn't take her raising her voice any more than hers could.

"Intimidating witnesses, Lewis, one of whom was a child."

"For heaven's sake. I just pulled a face at Daniel to stop him lying," Lewis defended himself. Hathaway wondered just what his guv had been up to while he hadn't been looking. "I never laid a finger—"

"You may have to prove that, because the mother's taken advice." Lewis sighed heavily at this unwelcome news, and Hathaway decided he need no longer worry about whatever might be going on between Lewis and Stephanie Fielding.

But, then Innocent was looking his way, and there was no more time to spare a thought for Lewis. "But you," she said. "You take the cake." She carefully shook her aching head.

"I'd like to explain, Ma'am—"

She forgot her headache and her promise to not raise her voice. "I bet you would. If I want your opinion, Hathaway, I'll ask for it!" Hathaway swallowed and kept his eyes straight ahead. Beside him, Lewis bit his lip to keep from saying something. Innocent went on, "The incident was witnessed by the public, by children, by the press!" Ah…the press. She might have put a brave face on for the public, called a specialist in for the children, but the press…that's what was giving her the migraine.

Lewis and every other senior officer in Oxfordshire could give speeches puffing the police to the press until doomsday, but they'd never undo five seconds of film showing one of Oxford's finest threatening to let a man fall to his death. "If Mallory had let go, you wouldn't be looking so bloody smug now, would you?" she demanded of Hathaway.

"I'm not smug, Ma'am. It's just the unfortunate shape of my face," he said earnestly, but he'd never convince her of that. Lewis was biting his lips to shreds to keep from laughing, but Hathaway had not meant to be facetious. "I'm sorry. It just seemed like the right—"

"Apologies are not enough!"

"—psychology, Ma'am."

Innocent and her migraine had had quite enough. "This is demotion to the ranks," she said. Demotion…for saving a man's life, for doing his job.

Hathaway swallowed hard, but it was Lewis who spoke first. "If you put Hathaway in uniform, Ma'am, I go with him." His sergeant looked over at him in surprise, and Innocent glared at him in anger.

"Calling my bluff, are you, Lewis?" she asked. Bluff…was that all it was? Hathaway had been told he had a poker face, but he was sure he had nothing on Innocent if that had merely been a bluff. "Do you really think that's wise?" she pointedly asked Lewis. Hathaway guessed that this was where any other officer (if any had dared to speak up in the face of her wrath in the first place) would have been backing down with a hasty apology or excuse of some sort.

But, Lewis was one of a kind. He knew when he held the moral high ground. Hathaway could almost hear the inspector's outraged thoughts: the press! She was going to demote a good cop for doing his job, because some joker with a camera couldn't see the whole picture? And how was a cop to do his job if every time he turned around someone was blowing something all out of proportion? Her job was to defend the officers out on the street, not sacrifice them on the altar of public relations!

Besides, he'd had more than enough of public relations, thank you very much. "If it gets me out of giving this bloody speech," he said. From the scandalized look on the chief superintendent's face, Hathaway thought they'd both be wearing tall hats and pedaling pushbikes before she was done with them. But, either it had been a bluff after all, or the paperwork to demote them both was too much for Innocent to contemplate while nursing a migraine. Formal reprimands in their files, immediate suspension and demotion if either of them ever pulled such shenanigans again, and a disgruntled and weary, 'Get out of my office—just go and…do your jobs!'


	14. A Final Word

_A Final Word_

Shaking his head to try clear his fuzzy vision, Inspector Lewis opted for Morse's way of doing the job. "Take us for a pint, Hathaway…I've no stomach for this place at the moment," he said.

"Think that's wise, Sir? Drinking on top of—"

"It's you who needs the pint. Mine's orange juice—it's a way out of this speech I need!" Lewis said. "And, neither of us will be fit to drive by the end, will we? You arrange transportation; I'll grab my bloody notepad." And that's how they'd come to be sitting at a table at the Victoria Arms with their backs to the lovely view.

"Oh, it's just bloody spiteful, making me do this," Lewis growled. He had been scribbling, staring off into the blue, exhaling loudly, rolling his eyes, _pffting_, scratching out, and starting the whole process over again all the way through Hathaway's first pint. It was obvious the speech was not progressing well.

"Better than walking up and down the High Street telling tourists the time," Hathaway said. Lewis did not look convinced. But, Hathaway was. Not that he would have done it. He just couldn't have. He would have turned in his papers and his badge first…and he'd discovered, that was something he really didn't want to have to do.

"Sir?"

"What?" Lewis said, busily scratching away at his speech.

"Thank you."

"Ah. Give over," he told Hathaway.

"Well, I just wanted you to know how grateful I am before I get drunk, so that you know I mean it," Hathaway told Lewis earnestly. The inspector shook his head, and it was difficult to tell if it was in response to his own speech or Hathaway's.

Lewis had had enough. He flung his notepad and pen out toward Hathaway and said, "Oh! Just write this thing for me, will you?" Hathaway took the pad curiously and ran an eye over the page. Lewis had been writing the thing for days and there was only the one lone paragraph to show for it? And not that good of a paragraph either. Any other day, the sergeant might have resented the extra work, but today…he smiled over the messy, helpless bit of writing and went to work.

Lewis groaned and grimaced as he gingerly felt around the plaster near his eye. "I might have to get this eye seen to," he said. "Know anyone?" Hathaway laughed. There was irony for you.

That and the pair of them. Lewis with his silver tongue able to talk confessions out of murderers and crazed men out of windows and coax answers from the dead but not able to write down a coherent paragraph with the thought of having to give a public speech looming over him; and Hathaway, not so great at talking publicly or privately—he couldn't even get Lewis, who seemed to easily understand the thoughts and intents of just about everyone, to comprehend how sincerely he appreciated what he'd done in Innocent's office—but with the speech already coming together nicely on the smudged, wrinkled pages of Lewis' notepad.

Of course, it wasn't hard to know how to represent the police in a good light when you worked everyday beside the very best.

_Author's Note: Thanks to the Lewis fan at my house and WhyAye for all the give and take, particularly over the letting go scene…it was a great help._


End file.
